It had been this way in 1934 when Farnsworth tried to become the first man to fly 3,400 miles across Antarctica. The expedition was dogged by ill fortune. First the Northrop monoplane Polar Star had wrecked its undercarriage when the ice shelf being used as a makeshift runway prematurely broke up: only the wings, caught by ice floes as the aircraft dropped toward the water, prevented the plane from disappearing into the sea completely. The millionaire steamed back to the United States to make repairs— Hart seeing Audrey again, sinking helplessly into the pool of her green eyes— and then returned dangerously late in the season, toward the end of the Antarctic summer.
This time weather was the enemy, week after week of storm and overcast. The millionaire's mood turned as foul as the climate and he finally ordered his men to pack for home. Of course it was then that a bowl of blue sky opened up like the doorway to heaven. "We're going!" Farnsworth roared excitedly. The crew heaved supplies on board the plane as Hart and his employer crouched over the maps a final time. In little more than an hour they'd lifted off, sprinting south. Then, three hours into the flight, a wall of cloud loomed over the polar plateau and Hart swung away.
"Dammit, man, what are you doing?" Farnsworth cried, looking up from his chart.
"That's suicide weather, Elliott." The featureless white of the Antarctic plateau had dissolved into the rushing fog of an approaching storm. "You didn't pay me to let you go down in that. We're going back."
Farnsworth protested that the front looked weak. Or that they might fly through it, or over it, or around it. That they were turning their back on history. He'd sputtered and raged and finally just seethed on the long painful retreat home, as the weather first chased them and then hung back over the white horizon, a taunting ghost. Back on Snow Hill Island the financier muttered "damned yellow" within hearing of the crew. Owen had stalked away in his own bottled anger, neither man really knowing if a path could have been found or if a break in the clouds would have proved a sucker hole leading them to whiteout and death. And in making his call Hart had committed a kind of suicide, giving up a sliver of Lindbergh-like fame for doubt, for whispers, for airfield second-guessing. No one would talk about it directly, of course. Especially not the woman. Audrey was incapable of knowing what to say because Hart didn't know himself. And ultimately, as if each was marooned on a fissuring shelf of ice, they drifted apart.
So Hart finally came to Alaska where he didn't have to face anyone not talking about it. Where the country was as fierce and empty as his heart. Where the almosts and what-ifs and do-overs wouldn't haunt him quite as badly. Maybe. Where he could wonder all by himself if the arrogant millionaire was secretly right— that he'd looked out over a frozen wasteland and allowed it to swallow his senses, squeeze his heart. And then turned away.
"Snow." He grimaced, watching the flakes whip past his windshield. Alaska was wrapped in gauze, the view losing definition, and Hart knew his chance of finding Anaktuvuk Pass was blurring with it. Still, as he drifted down closer to the forest, the wilderness offered a shred of familiarity: the dark black-green of the trees, the dull pewter of taiga lakes, a familiar scale of height and distance. In Antarctica, by contrast, there had been a glorious clarity of atmosphere that destroyed depth perception: a seemingly airless infinity above sterile whiteness without a hint of life. The continent, bigger than the United States, boasted an emptiness as intimidating as a cell, its clouds boiling down from the high polar plateau. Alien, primeval, Creation before the fire.
As the Stinson skipped from pocket to pocket of air, wings flapping as they picked up a rime of ice, the engine roared and then groaned. Only the toes of the Brooks Range were visible now and they'd turned white. He skittered west, looking for the John River, which rose near Anaktuvuk, and hoping he wouldn't overshoot and pick up the Alana, a river that dead-ended in the mountains. He cursed himself for being so anxious to lift away from Fairbanks and cursed Elmer for saddling him with a decomposing corpse. The cockpit windows were frosting, so he cursed the Stinson's balky heater as well. It was hard to believe the warmth of Fairbanks had given way to this, but that was Alaska. Where was Elmer's angel?
Ramona, you're a hard-luck case even when you're dead.
There! A ribbon colored white and lead-gray, leading into a knot of storm. Hart banked and began following the river. It led to a gap in the foothills and he pressed on, five hundred feet above the John. The water was unfrozen and low at this time of year. Its exposed bars had turned white with snow flurries.
The air had stabilized since he'd crossed the edge of the storm but light and visibility continued to fade, leaving him in a box of cotton. He dipped lower toward the broad gravel channel, snaking the plane and sensing more than seeing the squeeze of enclosing hills. Still no Anaktuvuk. Ivan was whimpering, his toenails skittering as he scraped for purchase in the bucking plane. "Dog," said Hart, "I think we'd better put down."
He'd been foolish not to do so earlier, he realized. The fog of snow had cost him the ability to judge exactly how close he was to the ground, increasing the possibility he'd slam into it when he tried to land. He needed a dark log to serve as reference point but had left all trees behind. He was in a developing whiteout, the same effective blindness he'd feared in Antarctica. "A sane man would have fled to Brazil," he chided himself, not for the first time.
If he could drop a reference marker from the plane he could judge his approach to the ground. Something big, something colorful, something… red.
Ramona's blanket was red.
He debated it for only a moment. Crashing would do her no better good— she'd be chewed up if the undercarriage broke and the plane skidded down on top of her— and the snow might cushion her fall. She was beyond caring, wasn't she? The only danger seemed to be the possibility of angry relatives if she was busted up too much. Right now they seemed less threatening than the unyielding flank of a mountain.
Banking as steeply as he could, he turned downriver, anxiously watching a snow slope solidify off his wing tip. Then he continued turning until he was pointing north again, satisfied he could maintain that orbit. There was a gravel bar below, far superior to boggy tundra for a landing. He unlatched the plane door and pushed it open against a shriek of wind and cold, holding it with his leg. Leaning out, one hand on the stick as he circled, he began tugging at the slipknots that held Ramona in place. Ivan kept up a low, rumbling moan.
Hart clung to a fistful of blanket. At the point where the John's channels joined, he let go. Ramona slumped, the wind caught her, and she was gone.
The Stinson bounced upward and circled. There! The red blanket was bright as a cherry against the snow, closer than he'd imagined: nervously, he pulled up a few feet. Then he aimed for her cigar-shaped form, wanting his undercarriage to touch just past her. Flaps down, power reduced, he glided down, fighting small gusts. The heavily laden plane was sluggish. He aimed as if to ram her and then hopped over Ramona at the last minute, striking the bar beyond. The plane bounced once, twice, set down, stumbled over a rock, began to slow. He'd made it!
Then it all went wrong. The right wheel banged into a snow-hidden hole and shattered, a wing tip caught, and the plane jerked sideways, pivoting out of control. The propeller chewed into gravel and disintegrated, one piece cracking the windshield. The engine screamed, coughed, died. And then it should have been quiet except that Ivan was barking excitedly. Hart blinked. He'd been thrown onto the control panel. Cargo had lurched forward to occupy the space where his head had been and he reached up to shove it back.